


How to Make the Universe More Great, More Hot

by swiftyfrisko



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, Gideon the Ninth Spoilers, Grumpy Old Men, Making Out, Snark, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swiftyfrisko/pseuds/swiftyfrisko
Summary: Harrowhark Nonagesimus’ walls came crashing down that night in Canaan House.Unable to move on, her personal mission has been to restore their shared destiny. But has she been a fool to dream the impossible? A bigger fool to let that dream become an obsession?She’s about to find out...
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 67





	How to Make the Universe More Great, More Hot

(3 years after the events at Canaan House...)

Another dusty, crumbling step. And another. One by one Harrow - there’s no turning back now.

Two questions occupied Harrowhark Nonagesimus' mind with an intensity that increased with her altitude above the valley floor, now far below: how the hell did she end up enduring trial-by-staircase in multiple layers of lace and hexablack formalwear and how much time did she have? 

The first was easily answered; it was required dress at the Resurrective she’d slipped away from 2 long days ago. What was particularly irritating was how meticulously planned her campaign had been over the past year, how flawlessly executed, only for her to end up in this ridiculous state at the very last: sweating, breathless, face paint in ruins. But painfully apt; why should a betrayal of this magnitude be easy? 

“No. Not a betrayal.” 

The words escaped aloud. Keep telling yourself that Harrow. You could even believe it.

As for the question of how long it would be before justifying her absence became more than merely an inconvenient question… push it to the back of your mind Nonagesimus. You've gone too far now. She felt in her pocket for the familiar, reassuring presence of the small glass bottle against her fingers. Still there. Of course it was; a charm she’d kept close for years.

Another cracked stone step. It was just a matter of stubborn persistence, of focus. And she knew she had that shit down. But damn it, a quick breather… She stopped yet again, head down, inhaling the thin mountain air deeply. And noticed the step was much clearer of dust and debris than the ones she’d been ascending half an hour ago. Had it been swept? That would be a positive sign. She raised her head. The path appeared to stop only a moderately tiring distance above. Please god not another false summit.

A few minutes later a moderately more tired Harrowhark stopped again, this time at the top step, but not to catch her breath. The staircase opened into a flat, wide courtyard, and beyond that, her objective. One more pace and a threshold was crossed. A line both physical and symbolic. The Emperor Undying could be merciful, she knew, but the parameters of that mercy were unknown, untested. Her steps towards this goal had been measured thus far, carefully calculated to enable some cover by way of diversion and big fat lies, but this was unambiguous, a heresy. The methods of the Exomancers beyond had some overlap with Necromancy in the great cosmic venn diagram of sorcery, but the differences outweighed them by far, according to her incomplete understanding. The Emperor Undying may or may not (probably not, be honest with yourself Harrow) be understanding, but Ianthe and Horrix would demand blood. Fuck those guys; the thought of their fury brought a wry smile to dry lips. 

Hadn’t she served Necrolord and Dominicus faithfully? She’d performed beyond expectation and mere duty more than once. Hadn’t she earned this? (Yes, Harrow the Heroic. Yes you damn well did). And if her calculations were correct, and this went off without a hitch, nobody need know anyway.

And what if she was wrong? What if this was all for nothing? What if you stopped prevaricating, Nonagesimus and got on with it. She ascended the final stair, stepped onto the broad, flat expanse of courtyard and surveyed the temple ahead. 

The Temple of Estrus the Beyond was more impressive than the descriptions she extracted from that scheming witch. Simple, almost brutalist lines, but with an elegance that disguised its function and what lay inside. The opening to the interior was a thin, wide ribbon of shadow that spanned the entire plain before her. The bulk of the temple rose above it in a towering bell curve of featureless black stone, but her attention was drawn to a dark robed figure stood a short distance away, close enough for her to see the wrinkles deepen in his wizened and weatherworn face as he fixed eyes on her. 

“Welcome Harrowhark the First, Necrosaint. We have been expecting you.” he announced with a gravity reserved for the wise and aged. 

“Am I supposed to be awestruck by your uncanny powers of clairvoyance? I’ve been climbing those bloody steps for at least the last 2 hours. And I am semi-famous.”

“Mmm. Rumbled.” the old man conceded and lightened up a notch, continuing pleasantly. “We weren’t entirely sure you’d make it. It looked like a difficult journey.”

“Observant. I never should have skipped ‘Basic Fitness for Necromancers’, but fluorescent spandex wasn’t my style.”

“Indeed.” he said as he looked her black garb up and down. “But it’s nice to see you’ve made the effort for us, young lady. Most visitors dress for comfort. The climb, you see…”

“Yes. I never got the memo and your FAQ sucked epically. Look, much as I live for small talk when I’m on a literally soul-crushing mission, against a ticking clock, under pain of death, I’d appreciate it if we moved things along.”

The ancient seemed impervious to snark. “Of course”, he said with a sly smile and turned to walk towards the temple, motioning her to follow.

As she walked from the sunlit courtyard into the temple interior, a chill settled over the Adept. It took a moment to first adjust to the darkness and then comprehend the construction before her. The temple itself was almost filled by what appeared to be a massive bell, apparently created from the same smooth, dark material as the exterior, its curves reflecting exactly the shape she’d seen from the outside. Although its blackness was so complete as to render it entirely featureless, she somehow had the impression that it was rotating very slowly, soundlessly. The bottom lip of the bell hovered a little above head-height, and below it, a vertically sided shaft cut into the mountain that matched perfectly the circumference of the dark artifact above. 

Showtime. Harrowhark cleared her throat, straightened her dark skirts and assumed her most formal manner. “O’ venerated and powerful Exomancer of the sect of Estrus. Please hear my most humble request. What I bid of thee is…”

“You seek a reunion.” he interrupted casually. “With one of flame kissed hair and great uncouthness.”

“Ok. Now take this or leave it, but I think you should have started right there. I’m significantly more awestruck now and lots more confident that I’m in the right place.”

“Noted.” he replied noncommittally. “Then let us get to business. The physical, please.”

Harrowhark reached into her pocket and produced the small glass bottle, unscrewed the top and shook out a lock of hair. When she had taken it, she’d anticipated it would be used for the purposes of control, or a trick of some kind, but that was a lifetime ago. She presented it delicately to the ancient. 

“Hair… “. he examined the strands closely, with dark, sunken eyes, bony fingers holding them up to the light, dark, turning them to best filter the rays of the setting sun. “Mmm. Nice color.”

“And also...”. She pulled a second object from the bottle; a small scrap of stained cloth. “Blood”, she continued. This one had taken some doing, cut from the dress she’d worn at Canaan House, at the very end. 

The elder took the scrap from her fingers and inspected it. “Excellent. Should do the trick.” He continued. “That’s one half of the equation. Onto matters of the spirit.”

“Within myself. I siphoned and consumed the soul entirely, three years ago.”

“Ahh... Within. Two souls entwined…”. The ancient considered this and sucked his teeth a moment before continuing. “Big job. That is a complication indeed. Thanergetic field logistics, entropic counter distillations… exogetic dimensional displacement... Additional complications mean additional costs, you must understand.”

A formed in Harrow’s stomach. She hadn’t anticipated this. “I’m 60% sure that’s 70% horseshit, but please explain ‘additional costs’.”

“Your necromantic abilities will be... diminished.”

The knot tightened. “How diminished?” she asked flatly.

“These matters are imprecise, I’m afraid. A noticeable amount, though hopefully… not severe. Hopefully.” Some hand waving emphasised the imprecise, hopeful aspect.

She smiled grimly. So it had been a false summit after all. One more step, one more sacrifice when she thought she’d accounted for them all. Not for the first time she marveled at how easy the choice was and wondered if another hand guided her, or this was simply a symptom of shared destinies. Anyway, it was quite the most straightforward monstrously difficult decision she’d had to make in a while. 

“Diminished.” she echoed. “Well if there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that existing at the height of my undiminished capabilities hasn’t exactly been a ticket to blissful happiness.” Then, quieter: “Only one thing brought that…”

“Yes or no, my child. Will you bear the price?”

“Yes.” she snapped. And then, resigned, the truth at last from grudging painted lips. “I’ll pay any price.” 

“Good. Follow me.”

The ancient one walked a few steps shuffled across to a small table near to the bell on which rested a small copper bowl and a silvery gavel. The knot in Harrowhark’s stomach wasn’t letting up. 

“So how does this work?” she asked, uncertainly. 

“Oh, just ring the bell, take a seat and when the time is right, I’ll use the magic word.”

“Magic word. Right. You’re up to 80% now old man. Get on with it.” she muttered nervously, the apprehension growing in her. A fool to dream? Or a bigger fool to let the dream become everything, consuming her? You’re about to find out Harrow. 

“First of all…” he pulled a single strand from the tuft of hair, and presented this and the blood stained scrap of cloth to her. “This one, Lick” he offered the cloth. “And this one” he indicated the hair, “under your tongue.”

“Uk. Better not catch something.” she said, but did as instructed all the same. 

“Least of your problems.” He placed the hair and cloth into the copper bowl. “Now, take the mallet and strike the Great Bell Atuned.” he commanded. 

She walked forward, took the small, surprisingly heavy hammer and struck it against the vast inky blackness of the bell. A rich, sonorous tone reverberated through the temple, flowing around them and outward to fill the valleys beyond.

“Now make yourself ready. Be seated upon…”. He walked a few steps to examine a region of the floor where a number of large stars, of varying numbers of points and complexity of embellishment, were carved into the stone surface. “This one” he announced, motioning to an ornately decorated seven point star of a width around half of Harrowhark’s height. Within it was carved a skull, screaming wide in agony. 

“Ominous taste in decoration” she remarked archly. 

“Decoration? Oh, no, my child. Not decoration.” he replied, ominously. 

She took her position, cross legged within the carving, as the tones of the bell swirled around them. The elder walked back to the slowly rotating bulk, took the contents of the copper bowl and cast them into the black shaft. The bell started to rotate a little quicker. Harrow listened and watched nervously for a long minute as the rotation gradually accelerated and the tone shifted and modulated, until a faint glow started to ebb from the shaft below. The suspense was killing her. 

“The suspense is killing me.” she said. “One more thing. I’ll lose some Necromantic abilities. What else? Everything that came from her? The swordcraft comes in rather useful.” 

“Hard to say.” replied the elder. “I imagine you’ll be a bit less snarky, but that may not be a bad thing.”

"Says you. Thought it rather suited me.” 

The pulsating tones flowing from the bell suddenly grew in intensity. Building in volume until her eardrums started to scream, overloaded. Could she actually feel her bones quivering? Her vision became blurred, so violently was her skull vibrating her eyeballs, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut. Was that sound her teeth chattering? She clenched her jaw as tightly as possible, screaming with mouth closed, and through it all felt the singing of the hair under her tongue.

The ringing built to a crescendo. Atoms and soul, physical and immaterial, resonating in unison. And when she felt it could fill her no more, lips against her ear, a whispered word breaking the equilibrium, slicing the tension that confined the energy in place like the popping of a bubble. A detonation of agony searing every nerve, the shock arching her back forcing sightless eyes wide and sucking the thin air into her burning lungs in a croaking gasp, no longer able to scream. Body drawn out into a single string, vibrating, driven by the bell.

Pain obliterated time and there was no way for her to comprehend how long she was suspended in exquisite torment. She became aware of a different tone within her. Two notes of a chord, on the same string.

The ringing started to decay into a hissing silence, a building blackness as her body started to shut down. The symphony of neurons and thanons that created her spirit and the consciousness within it fading into darkness and death. Perhaps death was a good option. Respectable. She’d tried oh, so hard, and nobody could blame her for falling now. 

Then a tender voice, pulled from a memory dulled by time yet as raw as a wound, buried in the spirit of another. “Don’t. It’s very easy to die, Gideon the Ninth.” 

A gasping, hoarse, breath sucking in cold air, eyes wide. She’d stopped breathing? Then a release, nerves regaining equilibrium, free of pain, body relaxing and a descent into a comfortable fog of unconsciousness. 

How long it was before she awakened and tried to open her eyes, she could not tell. Surrounded by darkness now, the sun long since hidden behind tall peaks. Vision struggling to emerge from eyeballs gummed shut, a blurred world of darkness and shadows. And a shape next to her. A familiar body, not quite forgotten. A voice, gentler than remembered.

“Missed me sugarlips?”

A feeble “uuhhhh” was all Harrowhark could summon. It can’t be true Harrow. Can it?

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

And she didn’t need working eyes to see a gently mocking smile. 

“You look older. Or have I caught you at a bad time?”

“Bit of both”, Harrowhark croaked, and forced her eyes open, to grasp a more complete truth, to be sure that this wasn’t just the cruelest of dreams. 

Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary of the Ninth, lay alongside her, red of hair and bulging of biceps, large as life and hotter than hell. She was propped up on one elbow, dressed in something black and practical (assumedly given to her by the old man). The impossible, casually made real. She was watching Harrow intently, wearing an uncharacteristically concerned expression. 

“She lives. I was starting to worry.”

It was too much, overwhelming. Despite all she’d done she had never dared to trust, never dared believe this moment could come… Keep it together Harrow. Deep breaths. Or would now be a suitable time to lose it? 

“Never mind me.” she whispered. “How do _you_ feel?”

Gideon looked away, appearing a little less self-assured, searching for words.

“How am I supposed to feel? It’s hard to describe. Physically I’m fine, I think, but I’m having trouble remembering what ‘fine’ should feel like, among other things.”

Her amber eyes met Harrowhark’s. “What I remember most is you, Harrow. Everything about you. As if you’re the center of my world and it’s still under construction. It’s as if there are voids within me that need to be filled. And I don’t mean in a sexual way, I mean in my mind.”

“Oh Griddle.” Harrowhark explained patiently. “That’s always been the case with your mind.”

“And I feel a bit more mature, less insolent.” Gideon said, ignoring the bait. 

“That’ll pass.” the Necromancer assured her. 

“God I hope so.”

She took Harrow’s hand. “So how was life without me?”

“Well, there’s a lot to fill you in on, but I could summarise it as: less great, less hot.”

“Told ya.”

“Congrats.” Harrow propped herself up on one elbow and looked her cavalier in the eye. “So don’t do that again. I mean it. Don’t ever leave me again.”

Gideon held her gaze, all traces of that smile gone. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus, I have absolutely no intention of ever leaving your side again.” She continued “Honestly, I didn’t last time. But things got majorly fucked up and I ended up improvising. Sorry for saving your life.” 

“I forgive you. Unconditionally.” 

“Then that makes us square.” 

She leaned in, and Harrow trembled in time with her pounding heart as she rose to meet her halfway with a smile in a kiss, this time at a place _below_ her nose. After some time, they parted.

“Don’t tell me: even better than your dreams.” breathed Gideon.

“You taste a bit… coppery actually.” Harrow mused. “Let’s try to wear that off.”

So they did.

“Oh, go get a room.” the elder grumbled after some time, from a safe distance. “This is meant to be holy ground.”

Gideon raised herself to her feet, somewhat stiffly, helping Harrowhark, who, for once, gratefully received the assistance. They walked to the boundary of the temple, and the Necromancer shivered in the mountain air. Gideon wrapped both arms around the smaller girl. 

“Harrow, I’m almost afraid to ask, but what next?” 

“My planning up to this point was meticulous Griddle, but it went no further. If it had, then I would have started to believe, and then the fear of failing would have destroyed me. Easier to just doubt.” She continued “I don’t know where we go from here. It could get rough. I have duties I may no longer be able to perform. Obligations I may have betrayed.”

“So why did you do it?”

“Oh Gideon. You know why.”

“But it's so much more gratifying to actually hear you say it.”

Harrow gathered her thoughts for a moment. “After Canaan House, everything changed. In one night, so much that had been locked in was released. And after it, my heart was as frozen in place as that girl in the tomb. I couldn’t move on. I’ve spent my whole life in service; to the Ninth House, to the Empire. I’ve never needed something for myself so badly. Bringing you back is at once the most and least selfish thing I’ve ever done. All I know is, I need you here. Our destiny, together.”

“One destiny, one end. I prefer that to the other one.” Gideon said, and Harrowhark felt a shiver go through her.

“One destiny, one end.” Harrow repeated.

Gideon tightened the hug a little “We’ll think of something. I have faith in you my Doll of Darkness. Some say it’s my only flaw.”

“I preferred Crepuscular Queen.” sighed her adept. 

“As you desire, my Fickle Fairy of…”

“Please don’t make me regret this. At least not within the first hour. There is a warranty period you know. Free returns on Exomantic corpus re-divination.”

“You’re shitting me!”

Harrow smirked.

“Ok.” Gideon realised. “You’ve changed, and I’m not sure it’s for the best. Let’s go.”

They walked together across the courtyard, but were brought up short by an insistent voice behind them. “I have one last requirement, one last price to pay, Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Listen very carefully.” the elder declared in solemn tones. 

The cavalier and adept stopped dead in their tracks and turned to him apprehensively.

“Live, and love. Harrowhark Nonagesimus and Gideon Nav. Live and love. This is what the creator planned for you, I believe. It just got cut a little short last time.”

“Thank you.” said Harrow simply. 

“If this is a mystically indirect way of telling me not to kill myself again, don’t bother, I’ve ticked it off the bucket list.” snarked Gideon.

“See. I was right about the snarkiness.” the relic muttered before turning and shuffling away.

At the edge of the courtyard Gideon regarded the stairs disappearing downward into the gloom, observed the altitude of the temple relative to the valley below, made a calculation. Truth dawned and she whistled appreciatively. 

“Wow. You weren’t kidding about the stairs. You must have wanted me back pretty badly.”

Amber and obsidian eyes met and drank deep in the gaze of the other, unable and unwilling to look away and dispel a moment of tender clarity. 

“You have no idea, Griddle.” Harrow said, and smiled, and once again Gideon found herself thinking: beautiful, who knew? 

After a moment, she took the hand of Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, who would ever after insist (to the irritation of Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary of the Ninth House) that she’d glimpsed the track of a single tear in the moonlight. 

“Come on. Let’s do it right this time.” 

**Author's Note:**

> (Update - if you enjoyed this, you can see what happens next in "Girl's Night Out", same fandom.)
> 
> This is for anyone who was as wrecked by the ending as I was (i.e. lots). Just had to get them together again. 
> 
> It's my first fanfic - first fic of any kind to be honest - so I can only hope it hasn't turned out *too* badly. Constructive criticism very welcome! Anyway, if you enjoyed reading it 1/10 as much as I enjoyed writing it, then we are off to a great start. I may even try another. (I did, and another and a few more)


End file.
